Most of the delay in the opening of the Denver International Airport was because of problems with

DENVER, Aug. 26 - Ten years ago, the new Denver International Airport marched boldly into the future with a computerized baggage-handling system that immediately became famous for its ability to mangle or misplace a good portion of everything that wandered into its path.

Now the book is closing on the brilliant machine that couldn't sort straight. Sometime over the next few weeks, in an anticlimactic moment marked and mourned by just about nobody, the only airline that ever used any part of the system will pull the plug. An episode bowing equally to John Henry, Rube Goldberg and Hal from "2001" will end.

People will be fully back in charge.

"Automation always looks good on paper," said Veronica Stevenson, a lead baggage handler for United Airlines and president of the union local that represents United's 1,300 or so baggage handlers in Denver. "Sometimes you need real people."

The handoff in baggage handling also illustrates how much has changed in airline economics since Denver's grandiose dream was envisioned in the early 1990's. Airlines that were flush then are struggling and looking for ways to save money now, as United will do by shutting down computerized baggage-moving.

Technology, too, has brought change. Back then, the big-brained mainframe doing it all from command central was the model of high tech. Today the very idea of it sounds like a cold-war-era relic, engineers say. Decentralization and mobile computing technology have taken over just about everything, allowing airlines, warehouse operators and shippers like FedEx to learn with just a few clicks the whereabouts of an item in motion, a feature that was supposed to be a chief strength of the baggage system.

The premise of Denver's plan was as big as the West. The distance from a centralized baggage check-in to the farthest gate -- about a mile -- dictated expansive new thinking, planners said, and technology would make the new airport a marvel. Travelers who arrived for check-in or stepped off a plane would have their bags whisked across the airport with minimal human intervention. The result would be fewer flight delays, less waiting at luggage carousels and big savings in airline labor costs.

Tours that preceded the system's debut led invariably to an airport basement where 26 miles of track, loaded with thousands of small gray carts, sped bags up and down inclines as conveyor belts minutely timed by the computer deposited each bag in its cart at just the right moment.

"They were so proud of it," said Raymond Neidl, an airline-aerospace analyst with Calyon Securities in New York. "It's the one thing they wanted to show you."

But then the price tag ballooned along with glitches. Construction costs of $186 million were compounded at a rate of $1 million a day for months in 1994 when the airport's opening was delayed by baggage-handling failures. Tens of millions more have been spent in the years since for repairs and modifications.

United, Denver's busiest airline, has been using a stripped-down, simplified version of the network for its outgoing flights since the airport opened in 1995 -- though "enduring" is probably the better word, since regular breakdowns have continued despite years of tinkering.

Automation never worked for incoming flights, whose baggage has been moved by handlers from the beginning. And no other airline ever tried to use the error-prone system at all.

United's general manager for customer service in Denver, Jim Kyte, says the pressure to cut costs as the airline struggles to emerge from bankruptcy, along with sharply rising fuel prices this year, ultimately forced the issue. Turning off the computer and reverting to the old-fashioned use of human beings who drive luggage carts from gate to gate -- the way things are still done at most airports -- will save $1 million a month in maintenance costs, which have far exceeded expectations.

The change might also bring new terms to a lease that now provides for United to pay the city, the automated system's owner, $60 million a year until 2025. Asked about the prospect of trying to renegotiate with Denver, a United spokesman, Jeff Green, said, "We are reviewing all options."

Those kinds of costs aside, the error rate among baggage handlers is lower than the befuddled computer could ever achieve, Mr. Kyte said. A test run this summer using workers to handle baggage for transfer flights through the airport has already proved its value, he said, with the number of mishandled bags down sharply in July from the corresponding month a year ago.

"We're going back to the future," Mr. Kyte said.

Workers with hand-held scanners, checking baggage bar codes at every juncture of transit, will give managers far better information and control than could have been imagined when the automated system was designed, officials at United said.

One expert who has studied the sad sack arc of baggage movement in Denver said the designers had invested too much belief in the wizardry they thought was at their command.

"It wasn't the technology per se, it was a misplaced faith in it," said Richard de Neufville, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor de Neufville said the builders had imagined that their creation would work well even at the busiest boundaries of its capacity. That left no room for the errors and inefficiencies that are inevitable in a complex enterprise.

"The main culprit was hubris," he said.

Sharp corners, for example, were too much for the system to deal with. The whirring baggage carts, programmed to pick up and drop off bags in a perfectly coordinated ballet, often just tipped over and dumped their loads.

Then there was the lizard tongue, formally known as a telescoping belt loader, which was designed to shoot out from the track system's maw directly to an airplane's luggage doors. It, too, was a flop.

BAE Automated Systems of Carrollton, Tex., which designed the system, has since been liquidated, and no one associated with the effort could be reached for comment.

The abandonment of computerized baggage transit is hardly the only step that United has taken to cut costs. The airline, which filed for bankruptcy in 2002, has repeatedly asked employees to share the pain, and many current and former workers could lose some pension benefits. Even the death of the automated system is not expected to result in additional jobs, since an increase in baggage handlers will be offset by a decline in the number of maintenance workers.

Industry analysts say recapturing and maintaining the good will of the workers will be crucial to the airline's ultimate recovery. "If they can keep the peace," Mr. Neidl said, "they have a chance of becoming a powerhouse in the industry again. If the employees declare war, the company will probably go the way of Pan Am."

In any event, managers at the airport say the failure of big-thought baggage transit does have a plus: lots of room in the basement. Denver has 33 baggage scanners the size of minivans that, as required by federal security regulations in the wake of 9/11, screen every piece of luggage. No one envisioned those regulations when the airport was built, or imagined where such machines might be put.

"When the federal government mandated that airports screen all luggage, some airports had to set them up by the ticket areas," said Chuck Cannon, a spokesman for Denver International. "We just took out some of the old system that had never become operational. We had the space."

Credit...The New York Times Archives

See the article in its original context from
May 3, 1994, Section A, Page 16Buy Reprints

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

As expected, Mayor Wellington Webb announced today that the new Denver International Airport, already six months late and more than $1 billion over budget, will not open on May 15, missing its fourth deadline.

But officials have found a sure-fire way to avoid blowing another deadline: they will not set one.

"I won't hazard a guess," Mayor Webb said at a crowded City Hall news conference today.

A malfunctioning baggage sorting system has been blamed for the delay, and the Mayor said the city will hire a technical inspector to review the $193 million system, supposedly the most sophisticated of its kind.

The delay is adding about $500,000 a day to the cost of the more than $3 billion project because of the interest on the bonds, which are being used to finance the project along with $500 million in Federal money. More than half of the cost of the delay will be shouldered by the airlines, especially United, the largest carrier here. United has agreed to pay about $8 million a month for up to three more months. Continental and other airlines will be charged a share of the delay after the airport opens. Dipping Into Reserve Fund

For now, the city will dip into the airport reserve fund to pay for the rest of the shortage, which officials acknowledged could mean the delay or cancellation of some of the capital projects for the airport after it opens. The Mayor said the city might also issue more bonds.

The builder of the baggage system, BAE Automated Systems Inc., of Dallas, said it had been haunted by computer complications in what was said to be the most sophisticated baggage system in the world. It is the first system to serve an entire airport, and it is the first with a special system for oversize baggage, which in Denver are most likely to be skis.

The baggage system, a network of rails to move luggage between three concourses, has been plagued by jams and shutdowns. City officials have said BAE engineers have to customize computer software to handle each problem.

Gene DiFonso, the president of the company, joined the Mayor and other officials at a crowded City Hall news conference, and stressed that, "We're not talking about a system not working at all," but rather one that has not been sufficiently "checked out." He said there was "nothing dramatic lurking in the wings," and said he expected the system to be ready "very, very soon." Matter of Fine-Tuning

Officials here characterized the problems as something that would be corrected with fine-tuning. Dave Doering, president of the City Council, said no one is concerned that the system is beyond repair.

"Let's remember, this project was originally not supposed to open until October of '94," he said, noting that Mayor Federico F. Pena, who is now Federal Transportation Secretary, had moved up the opening date by a year to hasten construction. "It's been only five years since voters approved this project. Let's not lose perspective on this."

The Mayor said he expected a consultant would be able to complete a review of the baggage system "as soon as two weeks, as much as 30 days."

In the meantime, travelers in Denver will continue to use Stapleton Airport, the 64-year-old installation at the edge of town. The new airport is 23 miles northeast of downtown Denver.

Denver International Airport, the nation's first new airport to be built since Dallas-Fort Worth in 1974, will cover 53 square miles, six times larger than Stapleton. Officials say the new airport will be able to handle 99 landings an hour in bad weather, compared with a maximum of 25 an hour at Stapleton.

During the delay, dozens of shops at the airport have remained shuttered, but others have opened to cater to construction workers. The Mayor said today that the city and the Chamber of Commerce were working on a plan that would bring relief to concessionaries hurt by the delay.